Helen+Koss


 * SUMMARY: Helen Koss, age 26, died on January 6, 1924 after an abortion perpetrated in Chicago attributed to midwife Emma Morch.**

On December 30, 1923, 26-year-old Helen Koss underwent an illegal abortion somewhere in Chicago. On January 6, 1924, she died at Norwegian American Hospital of complications. [|Midwife] Mrs. Emma Morch was arrested, and indicted for homicide by a grand jury.

Helen, the daughter of German immigrants Carl and Rose Koss, lived with her widowed mother and three grown siblings. She worked as a clerk in an office.

Keep in mind that things that things we take for granted, like antibiotics and blood banks, were still in the future. For more about abortion in this era, see [|Abortion in the 1920s].

For more on pre-legalization abortion, see [|The Bad Old Days of Abortion] Source: [|Homicide in Chicago Interactive]

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